NHS Staff preparing for the biggest move of their career

The existing Royal Liverpool University Hospital building was erected in 1978, combining 3 existing hospitals at the time, the Royal Infirmary, the Royal Southern Hospital and the David Lewis Northern Hospital.

The Royal as it stands today has been the origin of many advances in healthcare, ranging from treatments for blindness to vascular disorders, breast cancer to blood disorders. More recently leading to the Royal being designated as the one of the leading centres nationally for research in infectious diseases, the pancreas and first in human studies.

The new state of the art, £335million pound Royal Liverpool University Hospital forms part of Liverpool’s ever changing skyline standing 200ft feet tall with 13 floors.

The new Royal has been specifically designed in conjunction with our clinicians to meet the future health care needs of the population and includes 646 single bedrooms with en-suites, 23 wards, 18 state of the art theatres, a large clinical research facility and a 40 bedded Critical Care Unit.

The Emergency Department will be one of the biggest in the North West with its own CT scanner and special lifts for patients going straight to the operating theatres. There will be dedicated ambulance only access to the new Emergency Department.

The corridors within the building measure over 4.5km, which is over 4 times the distance between Anfield and Goodison Park and throughout there hospital there will be a total of 4906 doors and 2156 windows.

The Trust, more recently has been awarded digital exemplar status which allows for a greater emphasis on digital technologies. A large display screen in the heart of the atrium will welcome patients and visitors, as they walk through the centre of the main hospital highlighting health information and help communicate where services are located in the new building.

Overall there are 1589 display screens including patient information screens and TV’s within the single bedrooms, these display screens within the single bedrooms will enable clinicians to share diagnostic results with patients and will also have personalised health information and aftercare advice.

New technology will also be available to support patient safety in the single rooms including monitoring for heart rate and other vital signs which is displayed in the nurse station and also centrally in the hospital to highlight where the most seriously ill patients are and to staff these areas accordingly.

Aidan Kehoe chief executive at Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals said, “The new Royal will enable us to deliver state of the art healthcare in the best surroundings in the world. It will also help us meet the aspirations of our staff to provide the kind of service that we would want to see for our own families.

“We are planning to move by Summer 2018 and in order to prepare for the move, our redevelopment team have been working with over 5000 staff to coordinate the biggest move of our history.

“The new Royal will make such a difference to our patients and our great city. It is a truly a fantastic development that will be another major step forward in the emergence of the Liverpool Knowledge Quarter. These plans will go on to include The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre being built on the Royal campus in 2019. That will enable us to develop a comprehensive cancer service and transform care for our patients.

“Liverpool is often referred to as the cancer capital of Europe but by bringing Clatterbridge on to the site to link up with our services here, we will be able to improve cancer outcomes for our population.

Aidan Kehoe added, “This year we will also see the opening of the Life Sciences Accelerator. This is apartnership between ourselves and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) that will be conducting world class research in resistance, particularly antibiotic resistance which is one of the biggest challenges facing medicine over the coming years.

“Other floors within the Accelerator will be used to support start-up businesses and small enterprises in the city working in the field of health and life sciences. The ultimate aim is to create a world leading hub for research and development in the city, creating thousands of jobs in the process.

“We already have a commitment from the Royal College of Physicians to locate their northern headquarters in Paddington Village, but also many other companies are expressing an interest to work with us.

"Over the years deep attachments will have been formed involving patients, stories or memories. These will be important to reflect upon as we move into the new hospital and begin to create great memories and a great future for our city in our fantastic new hospital. This is a really exciting time to be working at the Trust and within the city of Liverpool."

“Over the years deep attachments will have been formed involving patients, stories or memories, these will be important to reflect upon as we move into the new hospital and begin to create great memories and a great future for our city in our fantastic new hospital. This is a really exciting time to be working at the Trust and within the city of Liverpool.”

To help staff become familiar with the plans around the move, an overall move plan has been devised to ensure services can be transferred over with minimal disruption to our patients. To move one clinical department to another location consists of approximately 300 – 320 tasks and there are over 90 different clinical department moves.

Marie Dewhurst, development manager added, “We have taken lots of staff to visit the new hospital site, it is really refreshing to see all the staff really excited where they will all be working. We have carried out lots of staff engagement events, inviting staff to see their new working environment and the positive difference it is going to make.

The site visits are really popular; when you take staff onsite you see just how amazed they are by the new facilities, they are really enthusiastic about the new Royal and how they have an opportunity to influence how they are going to work in their new hospital.”